BAGHDAD — The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power.

In a fortified concrete courtyard at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta thanked the more than one million American service members who have served in Iraq for “the remarkable progress” made over the past nine years but acknowledged the severe challenges that face the struggling democracy.

Panetta also said the many "lives lost in Iraq were not in vain." Wish I could believe that, but I still don't know what the hell we were ever doing there and don't see what we accomplished that was all so great.

Yeah, yeah, I know we toppled the hideous dictator Saddam Hussein, who was so cruel to his people. But there are hundreds of thousands less Iraqis there now to appreciate it, having been "liberated" into the graveyards. And of those remaining, are their lives really any better now? Let's ask these Iraqis:

As many as 2 million Iraqis — nearly 6 percent of the country's estimated more than 31 million population — are thought to have been forced from the cities and towns where they once lived and are housed in circumstances that feel temporary and makeshift.

More than 500,000 of those are "squatters in slum areas with no assistance or legal right to the properties they occupy," according to Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group. Most can't go home: Either their homes have been destroyed or hostile ethnic and sectarian groups now control their neighborhoods.

The last via Atrios who rightly notes, "We'll never really acknowledge the hell we unleashed."

Perhaps if even one of the Very Serious People who cheerleaded throughout the debacle and were wrong, wrong, wrong at every turn had really admitted how much they screwed it up or had paid even the tiniest price in credibility for it, it would feel more like a victory to me. But all these people still draw down the big bucks as they rest easy on their big media perches or remain safely snuggled into their "think tank" sinecures. Somehow that doesn't feel like winning to me.

Sorry to say, I just don't feel like celebrating. We lost this so-called war on so many levels. Small wonder the "victory" pagentry is so subdued.

8 Comments:

It is sad how confused you are over who was a good guy and who was a bad guy in the recent conflict in Iraq. For example, you suggest that the US is responsible for all of the deaths in Iraq- as if we were the ones strapping bombs to our troops and blowing them up in crowded markets. Perhaps you don't see a difference between good and bad, perhaps you are just intellectually dishonest, or perhaps your are dumb- either way, it's sad.

Hey, stupid people are most likely to call people stupid -- preemptively, I guess, but of course, those troops wouldn't have been in a position to get bombed if we hadn't brought our battle with all Qaeda to Iraq and let the loonies in across the border.

The devil is in the details and this worm, covering his ignorance with his store-bought opinions simply hasn't got the synapses or the honesty to reason.